War crimes in the Breendonk torture camp - official report. Belgium, 1949

War crimes in the Breendonk torture camp - official report. Belgium, 1949

DE Oorlogsmisdaden bedreven onder de bezetting van belgie 1940-1945 HET FOLTERINGSKAMP BREENDONK - War crimes committed under Belgian occupation - The Brindonk torture camp 1940-1945. Liege [Belgium] 1949.

The detailed official report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate Nazi crimes in BREENDONK. The commission was composed of six members of the Belgian government, who investigated Nazi crimes in the camp, in order to prosecute Nazi war criminals who roamed free after the war and were involved in atrocities in Breendonk. The report provides a detailed overview of the camp's activities in the years 1940-1945. Among other things, the report deals extensively with the situation of the Jews in the camp, their inferior status - the special mark they had to put on their clothes, etc., detailing how the abuse of Jews was worst. The Jews were the only ones in the camp who were arrested because of their origin, and not as 'political prisoners'. There is extensive information about the serious diseases that prevailed in the camp, the various types of forced labor, the methods of torture used by the Nazis in the camp, the number of those who perished, and more. The report is accompanied by harsh photographs of the torture facilities, the various wings, diagrams and maps depicting the exact location of each area in the camp.

Breendonk was a fortified military base for the Belgian army between the cities of Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium. During the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, it served as a detention camp, where Jews from the Belgian community were also imprisoned. On September 20, 1940, the first prisoners arrived at the fort. Belgian communists, members of the underground, hostages captured by the Germans, Jews from the Belgian community and also criminals were imprisoned there. In the first year of the camp, the Jews had about half the population of its prisoners. They were held in it separately from the other prisoners. Among others, Rabbi Shlomo Ullman, the chief rabbi of the Belgian Jewish community, and the heads of the Belgian Jewish Association were imprisoned in the fortress. The prisoners stayed in the fort for an average of about three months before being sent to concentration camps in Germany, Austria and Poland. The prisoners suffered from harsh living conditions, starvation, deprivation of medical care and cruel treatment by the camp staff, and they were enslaved; The Germans also conducted interrogations, torture and executions by hanging. Various 'political' prisoners were interrogated in the camp under severe torture. The first German commander of the fort, Philip Schmitt, was prosecuted in Belgium in 1949, convicted, sentenced to death and executed in 1950.

102 pages + [8] photo plates. Slight spots on spine. condition good.